[Fandom] Now I need to go re-read canon...

[jennaria]

...because I'm fairly sure that Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince is not actually about Harry's sexual awakening, featuring Draco, the aforementioned Half-Blood Prince, and possibly Ginny Weasley. (I told Wife this. She made the most interesting faces in response.)

In any case. I have now looked through ~500 pages of Harry Potter fanfic on AO3, and come to the following additional conclusions:

- Top AU: rewriting all of canon from the ground up, usually but not invariably sorting Harry into Slytherin. Also tends to peter out somewhere around the Triwizard Tournament. Second Most Common AU: Everything Changes After The Fire Nation Attacks Sirius Dies.

- It's fascinating to follow certain tags down a rabbit hole. 19 pages of 'Pureblood Culture' (but only 6 pages of 'Wizarding Traditions')! (And two and a half of those 19 pages are from one particular author who specializes in the kind of romance where it's super-shocking to brush your hair in front of someone who isn't your family or your fiance, and kissing someone, well. Abstinence porn in the finest Victorian tradition.) 9 pages of 'Wrong Boy-Who-Lived' (which usually involve Harry being a twin, and you can figure it out from there)! And 11 pages of 'Creature Inheritance,' wherein it turns out Draco is a Veela, Harry is a Dragon, and Snape really is a vampire after all. (I kid. Sorta. Not as much as I might be.)

- Also, wow, canon is over here and fanon is over there and I see those of y'all who are trying to bridge the gap, y'all are doing God's work, but it's a really big gap.

- Finally, you know that thing where you're reading a lovely rich WIP, and you get to the end and want more? And go check the Last Updated stamp and it's all 'ha ha this was uploaded from a defunct archive and hasn't been updated in over a decade'? Yeah. :hollow laughter:

Comments

[jennaria]

So far I've read Lord Of Caer Azkaban (loses points for 'well then we'll just share him! :-D :-D :-D', gains them for 'wait, if Harry's army is that bad-ass, then it makes no sense for a big dramatic battle confrontation between Harry and Voldemort! ...cool, commandos it is.'), and Harry Crow (fun! although you're right, loses points for sexism, also for only remembering that gay people exist half-way through the story, but gains them for world-building and well-handled villainy, especially in the second half).

(I will admit to rolling my eyes, just a little, at S'Tarkan's saying that to him, slash is automatically OOC.)

It's easy to 'world-build' when all you're doing is grafting something on to your own culture - and by 'own culture' I include race, country (and maybe region and city too) where you grew up, and social class. It gets more complicated as soon as you step beyond that.

[swingandswirl]

I will admit to forgiving Caer Azkaban's 'well then we'll just share him' because I really really hate love triangles, so that was a refreshing change (and rather eye-opening to a sheltered wee!Tam.) And I'd missed that comment of S'Tarkan's completely! Rolling my eyes forever.

I will say, though, that I am a little more forgiving of fics as old as these are (looking at the publishing dates, they're both over a decade old, while Harry Crow is still no spring chicken with a publishing date of 2012) because I remember what the environment, especially on FF.net, was like back then. No outright homophobia/ 'eww slash gross' was, IIRC, pretty progressive.

It's easy to 'world-build' when all you're doing is grafting something on to your own culture - and by 'own culture' I include race, country (and maybe region and city too) where you grew up, and social class.
BINGO. And JKR is really good at amusing little twists on the familiar. She just fails epically at stepping out of her Nice White British Lady wheelhouse, and doesn't seem to be willing to do any research to fix that. Which is especially infuriating because she of all the authors in the world has the resources.